Here are your Apple rumors and AAPL stock news items for Thursday:
T-Mobile Stung by iPhone 4S Sales: Philipp Humm, CEO of T-Mobile USA, spent a little time talking Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) during his company’s quarterly earnings report Thursday. The fourth-place telecom lost 186,000 contract customers during this past quarter — churn that Humm said was only going to continue during the fourth quarter of the year because of the iPhone 4S. T-Mobile is the only one of the top U.S. telecoms that doesn’t offer the iPhone. In the past, T-Mobile has claimed that it has 1 million iPhone users on its network. These users buy unlocked phones directly from Apple, then activate them with T-Mobile. Apple is set to start selling an unlocked iPhone 4S in November, so at least T-Mobile can expect a few iPhone 4S users on its network in the near future.
Intel Ultrabook Flounders Against MacBook Air: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) was banking on its streamlined “Ultrabook” design to win back some of the laptop PC market that Apple has gobbled up in the past year thanks to the popularity of the MacBook Air. No such luck — at least according to a Thursday report at Digitimes (via Apple Insider). Manufacturers Acer and Asustek, two of the top five PC makers, were expected to order between 250,000 and 300,000 Ultrabooks by the end of the year, but because of poor sales, those orders are now expected to be cut by 100,000 to 120,000. Demand isn’t expected to pick up until Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) releases its Windows 8 operation system in the fall of 2012.
Steve Jobs Nominated to be Time‘s Person of the Year: Steve Jobs might be the first person to be posthumously awarded Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award. News anchor Brian Williams nominated the former CEO and technologist in a speech on Wednesday, highlighting Jobs’ influence on modern life as deserving of the award. Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was given the award in 2010.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
